


It's Been a Long Time

by intangible_rice



Category: Portal (Video Game)
Genre: (again), F/M, caveline, in which cave is an idiot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-07
Updated: 2019-01-07
Packaged: 2019-10-05 23:26:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,637
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17334365
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/intangible_rice/pseuds/intangible_rice
Summary: Caroline has a chance encounter with an old flame, and Cave suddenly finds himself feeling very jealous.





	It's Been a Long Time

**Author's Note:**

> This is another transfer from my tumblr. It's rough in a lot of ways, but I had enough fun re-reading it to post it here anyway. Hilariously enough, this entire thing was inspired by a random scene in Downton Abbey of all things. Enjoy!

“Absolutely. 10 am sharp,” Cave outlined. He had a good feeling about this one. He even had his feet up on his desk, twirling the phone cord in his hand as he talked. Some companies would back out of a deal once they heard about Aperture’s more “unusual” projects, but Cave knew from the tone of the voice on the other end that this fella was a no-nonsense man after his own heart.

“And after we’re done crunching numbers, I’ll see to it that you get a full tour of the facility from my assistant,” Cave continued. “No trouble at all. See you tomorrow, Jim. Bye now.”

He slapped down the phone receiver and chuckled to himself, the promise of incoming riches making him giddy. As he made a half-hearted attempt to sort some of the papers covering his desk, his assistant stepped into the room, carrying a clipboard and flashing her characteristic smile. Even miles underground, it was a sunny day when she smiled.

“I have the latest reports from the lab, sir,” she announced.

“Great, great,” Cave beamed. “Just set them down here,” he said, hastily shoving a stack of paperwork aside to make room.

Caroline’s eyes scanned the disarray that was laid out in front of her boss. “Anything here I can work on, Mr. Johnson?”

“Well sure,” Cave said, smiling again. “That’ll take a load off my back. Thanks, Caroline.” He scooped up a stack of manila folders so full they threatened to spill their contents all over the office. Caroline took great care in taking them from him. “Maybe one of these days I’ll see the wood grain on this desk again, eh?” Cave joked. Caroline laughed. Cave knew that she probably did twice the amount of paperwork as him and still managed to keep her own desk clear, but luckily she never seemed to have a problem with his own clutter.

“I’ll start working on this right away,” Caroline assured as she made her way towards the door that led to her own office.

“Oh, and Caroline,” Cave said before he would forget it, “Just wanted you to know, you’re going to be giving a tour to an investor tomorrow. Around 11:00. The works. Take him on the train and everything.”

“Yes sir, Mr. Johnson,” she replied with a smile. “Hoping for a big deal, I take it?”

Cave’s wish was for his employees to always be hard at work, and normally, he wouldn’t have stood for this kind of speculation, both for the time it wasted and the prying nature. Anyone could be a spy for the Russians these days – or worse, Black Mesa.

Caroline was different, though. Her dedication to the job was unparalleled, and even with an occasional pause, she’d still get more work done than anyone else around here. She’d long ago earned enough respect for the privilege of shooting the breeze with her boss.

“I hope so,” Cave answered her. “Big defense company down South. Not only does it sound like they wanna give us a lot of funding, but their CEO wants to compare notes as well. See if any of their technology could be put to use in our science labs.”

“That’s great, Sir,” Caroline congratulated. “I hope it goes well.”

“I know it will,” Cave said cockily. “I could tell just talking to the guy that we see eye to eye. Even if he did sound a little young for a businessman.”

“Are you sure he’s their CEO then?” Caroline asked.

“Yeah,” Cave assured. “Jim Mitchell, of Mitchell Tech Strategies…”

Caroline’s head cocked to the side in interest. “Jim Mitchell?” she repeated, an incredulous but excited look suddenly on her face.

Cave, who hadn’t been expecting this reaction in the slightest, eyed her with a curiosity that edged more towards suspicion than he would have liked to admit. “You know him?” The question was framed with sarcasm, as Cave thought this impossible, but as he continued to study the sudden lift in her eyes, he had the strange feeling that he was about to be proven wrong.

“Well, I…” Caroline started. “It couldn’t be him…” she muttered, shaking her head as if to rattle around some slumbering memories. “But then… hmmm…” Her smile was practically covering her entire face now, and Cave realized he was clenching his hand tightly around a pen for some reason.

When Caroline sensed that her boss’s gaze was still on her, she looked back up at him. “I used to go to school with him,” she shrugged. “Or with _a_ Jim Mitchell, anyway.”

A recollection of Jim saying something about being familiar with the area rang in Cave’s ears.

“What state is he coming from?” Caroline asked.

“Tennessee,” Cave answered. He’d half-toyed with the idea of lying about it, oddly.

Caroline let out a small chuckle. “Isn’t that something.”

“Caroline, is there something you want to tell me?” Cave said suddenly. It came out more forcefully than he’d intended, and he wasn’t exactly sure why he’d said it at all. Something about this conversation was trying his patience.

His assistant gave him a shocked, and somewhat defiant look. She wasn’t used to being ordered around harshly like the other employees, because she knew damn well that there was no reason for her to be. She stared at her boss in silence, waiting.

Cave felt the back of his neck getting hot. “I just need to have all the background information there is available on a deal, so I know which angles to pitch,” he explained clumsily.

Caroline relaxed her stance, which was somewhat reassuring to Cave, at least. “We were friends,” she finally offered. She turned to the side and began tidying up a dusty bookshelf against the wall, a totally unnecessary task. “Dated for a while,” she added as an afterthought.

Cave felt another mysterious flash of heat rising up to his face. “Really?” he managed to say, despite most of his attention now being focused on what in the world that sensation was.

Caroline gave her boss an incredulous look. “Yes, really,” she answered with a laugh, continuing to rearrange the tomes. “Believe it or not, I don’t live here. I do go home at the end of the day.”

“Well… how long is a while?” Cave pressed, for seemingly no reason other than some masochistic desire to feel more of these strange warm flashes.

Caroline shrugged again. “Senior prom. And then until sometime that summer.” Cave was doing the math in his head. “I was so surprised when he asked me,” Caroline admitted. The bookshelf was forgotten now as her eyes turned wistful. “Most of the boys in my class hated me because I got better marks in science. Jim was nice, though. And so funny…”

Cave suppressed an absurd reaction to tell her she shouldn’t be on a first-name basis with him.

“He went off to college to study physics,” Caroline continued. “I would have _loved_ to go too, even just to do a little bit of what he was doing… but my parents decided secretary school was more practical for me.”

“So it ended, then,” Cave concluded, relaxing.

“Not exactly,” Caroline contradicted. Cave felt himself tense up again.

“He made his way back to town in time for our five-year school reunion,” Caroline recalled, smiling. “We hadn’t talked in so long, but it was just like that first date all over again. We hit it off so well…” A glance at her boss’s expression made her realize she was oversharing. “Anyway, we went steady for a while, and then when Korea happened, he got drafted. We wrote for a bit, but he was doing defense work, which he couldn’t write about too much. Last letter I got from him was from an army base in Tennessee, talking about a business opportunity someone had offered him for after the war ended. I guess he took them up on it.”

Caroline smiled, but noted that curiously, her boss’s expression hadn’t changed. He was still staring straight at her with an odd mixture of discomfort and confusion.

“He was always so personable, he probably fit right in down there,” Caroline commented. “My guess is he built a great company, bought a house, found a wife, and had some kids.” She wasn’t quite sure why she’d added that speculation.

Cave did feel some amount of relief at that suggestion. Jim Mitchell might’ve sounded young on the phone, but it had been a long time since Caroline was in high school. Depending on how late in the war he’d been drafted, though…

“I should work on these papers,” Caroline suggested.

“Right, yeah,” Cave responded absentmindedly as she turned and left. As the door shut, Cave’s hand instantly went to the back of his neck to feel the heat rising off of it. He then circled around to his face, wondering how red it must’ve looked. What the hell had that been about? Was he sick? He’d always been healthy as a horse, but maybe he should give the company doctor a call. Or maybe just have a cigarette. Anything to avoid thinking about the possible causes that were circling around in his mind.

* * *

Cave fidgeted impatiently in his office, tapping his fingers on his desk and pulling repeatedly at his shirt collar. This should be a piece of cake, really. Just wait for the arrival of this schmuck, spit some facts about the company at him, endorse his big fat check, and send him on his way. He’d even saddled Caroline with something complicated to work on so they wouldn’t end up wasting valuable company time on that “tour” nonsense. If this Mitchell guy was as successful a businessman as he claimed to be, he’d understand.

The door to his office opened. A tall man in an impeccably pressed and tailored suit, with slick-combed brown hair and some sort of stupid company pin on his lapel, stepped in. Cave tried not to roll his eyes. If this was Jim Mitchell, he was even worse than he’d been expecting.

After his entrance was met with silence, the man hesitated. “Cave Johnson?” he asked.

“ _Mr_. Johnson,” Cave replied simply, despite the fact that he and Jim had called each other by their first names a dozen times on the phone yesterday. If this was any other prospective deal, Cave would’ve been up on his feet minutes ago, shaking hands and offering drinks, but somehow he couldn’t see the value in extending that courtesy here. He eyed the man’s left hand, noting that he had no wedding ring.

Cave smirked. This poor sap was probably so obsessed with his work that he never had time for relationships. The humor in the observation faded when Cave realized who else that reminded him of, however.

The man nodded, but still looked uneasy. “Jim Mitchell,” he confirmed. “I… just wasn’t sure I had the right office. Usually at these kinds of companies I get intercepted by a secretary long before I get to the CEO.”

Cave eyed Jim’s friendly smile with contempt. He looked so ridiculously young, too much so to be in charge of a company. No one that wet behind the ears could possibly run a business of any decent value. “She’s not a secretary, she’s my assistant,” Cave said brusquely, only allowing himself half a second to wonder why he felt it important to clarify. “And she’s busy with something else.”

Jim shifted in his feet uncomfortably at Cave’s short responses. “If it’s a bad time, I can come back,” he offered.

“You made an appointment with me, son,” Cave reminded, annoyed. “Can’t break it off now, you’re standing in my office.”

“Right…” Jim nodded uneasily. He paused before continuing, as if deciding which words were least likely to produce another disparaging remark. Before he could say anything else, the door to the office opened again.

“Mr. Johnson,” Caroline began, “is there anything you…” she trailed off as her eyes met those of the man standing in the middle of the room. “Jim!” she said with a smile that made Cave’s stomach turn.

“Caroline?” he replied, the same look of excited disbelief on his face. “What a surprise!” He pulled her into a hug, and Cave pressed the tip of his pen against his desk so forcefully that it almost burst.

“It’s been a long time,” Caroline commented as they separated again.

“How are you?” Jim asked.

“Caroline, we have business to do,” Cave reminded gruffly.

“Of course,” Caroline replied, trying to hide her annoyance.

“We can catch up on the tour,” Jim reminded her, and Cave was seeing red.

“Is there anything you need?” Caroline asked. “Water, coffee…?”

“We’re just fine, Caroline,” Cave cut her off. “Please get back to work.”

Caroline glared at him, and for a split second, he flinched. It was rare for her to chew him out, but it had happened, and it wasn’t pleasant. The fire in her eyes faded as she changed her mind, however, and instead said cooly, “Yes sir, Mr. Johnson.”

Cave felt a small stab of regret as she closed the door behind her.

“Sorry about that,” he apologized as Jim finally took a seat. “You know how they are, always goofing off.” He felt the lie sting on his tongue. He wasn’t sure why he was maligning Caroline, and yet the words still came out.

“Not my Caroline,” Jim replied calmly.

It took all of the limited restraint Cave had to not lunge across his desk and start clobbering him. Just who the hell did this guy think he was?

“Excuse me?” Cave said, his voice as controlled as possible, which wasn’t very.

Jim was caught off-guard. “Oh, just… I grew up around here,” he explained. He pointed towards the door, as if the incident with him and Caroline was still going on and should have explained everything. “Caroline was my best girl for a while. You’re a lucky man,” he said, and Cave perked up for a half second, “to have her working for your company.” His fists clenched again.

“Well still, I think I’m a better judge of my employees’ work ethic than you,” Cave continued, feeling disgusted with himself.

“I meant no disrespect,” Jim explained. “Just that Caroline was always one of the hardest working people I knew.”

“Well, you’ll have to tell me what you did to whip her into shape,” Cave joked. He felt a strange, cold sweat, knowing that Caroline was the best, and yet this was her reward. He cleared his throat, as if trying to get rid of the bad taste in his mouth. “Anyway, I thought you came here to discuss business, not my employees.”

“Yes,” Jim said. He placed his briefcase on the chair next to him and opened it. “The work you do around here is fascinating. Aperture products are light years ahead of anything anyone else is coming up with. Well, except maybe Black Mesa.”

That was it.

“Now,” Jim continued, “my company is a lot smaller, but we’re expanding. Our production went up 23% last year-”

“Well mine went up 28%,” Cave felt compelled to inform him.

Jim gave a nervous smile. “And we’ve been given six industry awards…”

“I got twelve,” Cave boasted, crossing his arms.

Jim sat up straighter, his patience obviously wearing thin. “I’m not trying to compete with you, Mr. Johnson, I’m trying to suggest a partnership.”

“And since you just said my company is light years ahead of yours, what could you possibly offer me?” Cave asked.

Jim finally leapt to his feet. Cave sprang up after him, expecting a fistfight.

“I came here to offer you a $3 million investment in exchange for using Mitchell Tech equipment in your labs,” he reminded. “But I’m starting to think that might not be the best use of my company’s resources!”

“You’re damn right it isn’t!” Cave retorted, no longer caring about composure. “Why would I want to pair Aperture with some punk kid’s awful products?”

“You haven’t even _seen_ any of our products!” Jim shouted, flabbergasted by what was happening.

“Don’t need to!” Cave yelled in response. “You come in here, you insult me, you act like you own the place…”

“Insult you?”

“…You _interrupt_ me,” Cave continued, “It’s obvious what kind of company you’re running!”

“Well maybe I was wrong about the kind of company _you’re_ running!” Jim countered. “But I’ll reserve my judgment until _after_ my tour.”

“You think you’re still getting a tour?” Cave said in disbelief.

“I was _promised_ a tour.”

“That’s for me to decide, and I say you’ve overstayed your welcome!” Cave bellowed.

“Caroline still thinks she’s giving me a tour.”

“She’s busy!”

“Why don’t you call her and ask?”

“Just who the hell do you think you are?” Cave said, angrily shoving a stack of papers off his desk. They scattered wildly through the air. “Get out of my office and _off_ of my property! NOW!”

Caroline burst through the door, her face lined with alarm. “What the hell is going on in here?” she asked, abandoning all efforts at workplace decorum.

Cave was still seeing red, but as his assistant looked at him with anger and disbelief in her eyes, he found that he suddenly had no idea what to say. There was certainly no possibility of explaining himself to her, at least not now.

“You can ask him later,” Jim said, gathering his things. “I’d like that tour now.” Caroline seemed equally speechless as she turned to look at their visitor. “Of course, he probably thinks you’re too lazy to give me one,” Jim added.

Caroline’s eyes shot back to Cave. “What does that mean?” she asked. Her voice reminded Cave of a steam kettle that was just beginning to boil. Cave still found himself unable to reply.

As she continued to stare at him, Cave felt his anger ebbing away, to be quickly replaced by guilt. Caroline, meanwhile, gave him a look which flirted briefly with the territory of hurt, before settling decidedly on disgust. She shook her head at him, then turned to look at the door. Without another word, she followed Jim outside.

Cave felt like a cement block had collided with his chest. He knew he’d made her angry – that fact was impossible to avoid. But he would have bet his life on her staying in his office after that idiot left, to shout at him for being so stupidly bullheaded. Actually going after the man was entirely unexpected. Cave’s stomach twisted as he wondered if she’d ever come back, or if the best deal he’d been offered all year and the best employee he’d ever have were now walking off arm-and-arm into the sunset.

He sank into his chair, defeated.

* * *

In a situation like this, Cave Johnson and a bottle of liquor would usually become close friends. Instead, Cave had spent the entire afternoon – and what was rapidly becoming the evening – doing nothing but sitting at his desk, staring at the door on the side of it which led to Caroline’s small office.

He really should give her a larger space to work. She certainly deserved it. She deserved a lot of things, Cave thought with a sigh, and she was probably going to get them all at Mitchell Tech within a week.

Overreacting and flying off the handle were common occurrences for Cave Johnson. Actually taking the time to figure out the cause behind them, however, was not. He found himself endlessly turning over his thoughts – beating himself up for his stupidity, then pulling back whenever he started to get too close to what it was that had angered him so much about Jim Mitchell. He tried to reassure himself by concluding that Jim was a smug idiot who deserved it. He would only believe that for about a second, though, until the cycle started again.

He couldn’t deny, of course, that his attitude towards the man had changed once he’d learned Caroline had dated him. But that was absurd. Cave himself had had friends and a life outside of Aperture once. Why should he be angry at Caroline for the same thing?

Cave found that he couldn’t shake a faint, but persistent feeling of betrayal over the whole thing. He had never known Caroline’s dating history, or even that she’d _had_ any. She seemingly spent all of her time working here, usually right by his side. Somehow it had never occurred to Cave that she could have had outside interests. He’d never said anything about it, but he guessed he’d just sort of thought… he’d hoped… he’d imagined that…

Cave jumped when the door to his office opened. His eyes widened as he saw Caroline, the woman he’d spent the last seven hours imagining was on her way to a new and better life somewhere else, step inside. For a split second, he thought about interrogating her with a “Where have you been?”, but instantly decided against it. He’d spent enough time being pointlessly unkind to her today, the guilt from which was burning him up inside.

“…Hi,” he said instead, pathetically.

Caroline crossed her arms. “Do you want to tell me what all of that was about earlier?”

Cave swallowed. “No,” he said, even more pathetically.

Caroline sighed. To Cave’s surprise, instead of chewing him out, she began picking up the papers that he had left undisturbed on the floor since pushing them off his desk earlier.

“You’re lucky Jim isn’t as stubborn as you,” she finally said. “He had half a mind to report you to the Better Business Bureau.”

“He probably should have,” Cave admitted. “I deserve it.”

Caroline’s eyes flicked up to her boss in surprise. Admissions of wrongdoing from him were as rare as four-leaf clovers. “Just try not to screw up the next deal,” she advised. She condensed the papers into an orderly stack before standing up to return them to her boss’s desk.

“Thanks,” he managed to say. Caroline merely nodded. They stared at each other in silence for a moment. “And… sorry for what I said before… about you,” Cave added clumsily. If it was anyone but Caroline, he would have never sunk to the low of giving an apology, but he owed it to her. “We both know it’s not true.”

“Thank you, Mr. Johnson,” Caroline said, with only a trace of gratitude in her voice. She turned to leave the room.

“How was your date?” Cave asked. He knew he had no right to pry, and yet he had to know.

Caroline stopped and turned to face him again. She looked annoyed at first, but when she saw that her boss’s face was absent of its earlier malice, she allowed herself a small smile. “Very nice, actually,” she admitted.

Cave’s heart sunk. Some small, irrational part of him had still been clinging to the hope that she’d just been sulking in the bathroom all day. He didn’t feel the flash of anger he’d felt earlier, though. The fight had gone out of him. There was no point to it anymore.

“He took me to lunch,” Caroline continued. “We spent the whole afternoon talking, catching up, visiting all the places around town we used to go…” The same fondness that had overcome her expression yesterday was now back. Cave noted dejectedly that she was almost glowing. After an instant, however, the effect faded, and her expression changed to one more pensive.

“Then what?” Cave asked, noticing the shift. 

Caroline paused. “I didn’t tell you this before,” she started, “but when Jim got drafted, he asked me to marry him.”

“He what?” Cave asked, discovering that he did still have a little anger left in him.

“I told him it wasn’t right,” Caroline continued. “We loved each other, but he was just acting on impulse. He could have felt entirely different after going into the service. And when he stayed in Tennessee, I assumed I was right.” She took a deep breath. “But I guess not, because he just proposed again.”

Cave’s stomach dropped. In that instant, everything he’d been dancing around since yesterday, every thought he’d tried to bury or reaction he’d attempted to ignore, came up to smack him in the face. He didn’t like Jim for one reason, and one reason only. It was really quite simple, once he allowed himself to realize it. He could only imagine how awfully stunned he must have looked to Caroline.

“Congratulations,” he said, sincere despite his regret. “When’s the date? I’ll send flowers.”

Caroline laughed. “Mr. Johnson, I said no.”

Cave’s eyes widened in surprise. “You… you did what?” he found himself saying. “Why?”

“What do you mean why?” Caroline asked.

“Well… he obviously cares for you,” Cave said. He might as well say one decent thing to her while he still had the chance. “And you like him, and he’s a successful businessman who’s only going to go up…”

“Oh, is he?” Caroline asked with a smirk. “Because from what I heard you shout across the facility this morning, I wouldn’t get that impression.”

Cave felt his face redden. “Well, I mean…” he fumbled. “Just because I don’t like the guy doesn’t mean you should suffer.”

Caroline smiled. “If I wanted to marry Jim, I’d say yes. But I don’t.”

Cave didn’t look any less confused.

“I can’t just pretend it’s 1952 again and pick up where we left off,” Caroline continued. “I’m a different person now. This facility, our work, our…” she paused. “I could never leave it all.”

Cave cleared his throat. 

“And if I had any feelings left for Jim, they disappeared when I told him that,” Caroline continued with a laugh. “He couldn’t understand how I could love working in this place. And he thought you were something he had to save me from. It was ridiculous.”

Cave felt guilty, because with the way he’d acted earlier, that conclusion was easy to come to. But he allowed himself to at least smile over the outcome. “I knew I was right about that guy.” He was happy to see Caroline return his grin.

“Well, next time, try to keep your ideas to yourself until after a meeting,” she suggested slyly.

“Don’t worry,” Cave nodded. “I’ve learned my lesson.” That was true in more ways than one. Despite his jokes, he’d made exactly the same mistake as Jim had. He’d spent so much time worrying about that man swooping in and taking Caroline away that he’d never stopped to realize that Caroline was the one to deciding what was best for her, not the two of them. He felt like he deserved to be kicked. 

“So anyway, while it was fun being a love-striken schoolgirl again for a day, there’s nothing I’d want less than to spend my whole life as one,” Caroline declared. “As for the time I missed today, I can work the rest of the night to make up for it. Or Sunday…”

Cave chuckled. “Are you serious? With all the extra time you work already? Don’t worry about it.”

Caroline flashed her familiar sunny smile at him. Cave never wanted to be without that smile again. “Thank you, Mr. Johnson,” she said appreciatively, turning to go.

“Caroline,” Cave called after her.

She stopped and turned back. “Yes, sir?”

Cave paused. There were hundreds of things he wanted to say to her, but none that he was sure he actually could. 

“Mr. Johnson?” Caroline asked again.

He cursed himself. Since when did Cave Johnson chicken out of anything? He stared down at his desk and told himself to let it go. Caroline had already dealt with one man’s unsolicited declarations today. No need to burden her with more.

“I’m glad you’re not leaving,” he said instead.

Caroline smiled. “Me too, Mr. Johnson.”


End file.
